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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190889">Scars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padawan_Writer/pseuds/Padawan_Writer'>Padawan_Writer</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Arch-nemeses work the same way as soulmates, Aro-ace Hux, Aromantic, Aromantic Armitage Hux, Asexual Armitage Hux, Conversations, Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, M/M, Post-Battle, Scars, You can't change my mind</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 16:09:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,464</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27190889</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padawan_Writer/pseuds/Padawan_Writer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of the battle of Starkiller Base, Hux and Millicent come and visit Kylo in hospital for a heart-to-heart talk about scars, nemeses and the headaches of command.</p><p>Scars don’t heal… but then again, what if they’re one of those things that don’t need fixing?</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Armitage Hux &amp; Kylo Ren, Armitage Hux &amp; Millicent the Cat, Armitage Hux/Kylo Ren, Millicent the Cat &amp; Kylo Ren</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>24</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Scars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Dedicated to everyone who has struggled with scars, marks, skin diseases, or any part of your appearance. Only you can tell your unique story, but this is for you, based on some of my own experiences. You’re beautiful!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hux had rushed Kylo straight to the hospital bay after the battle of Starkiller Base. </p><p>After days of bacta treatment, trying to sleep, trying to eat, Kylo finally felt well enough to receive visitors <em>not</em> on business. This was because he fully expected nobody to come.</p><p>He was wrong.</p><p>“General Hux to see you, sir?” said the nurse droid. Kylo sighed. Hux had probably come just to mock him about his defeat. Still, Kylo wanted a distraction, even the distraction of anger, and though he would never admit it to himself, he was lonely.</p><p>“Let him in.” </p><p>Kylo subconsciously put his hand to his face in a reaction to the itching of his wound beneath the bandage, and snatched his hand way when he found what he was doing.</p><p>Hux was standing in the doorway, watching him with his cat in his arms. He’d brought her for comfort, to relieve any awkwardness. “How’s your wound?”</p><p>Kylo was about to automatically say that it was nothing, but he stopped. It <em>wasn’t</em> nothing. And he didn’t like to lie, not to Hux. “It’s not painful, not with the morphine,” he said, settling back into the pillows.</p><p>“What is it then?” Hux asked, walking over to the bed. Usually he enjoyed towering over Kylo like this, a rare moment where he didn’t feel like some inconsequential comic relief barely holding on to his position, but something between them had changed after the rescue. Some understanding, some power shift. He looked around for a chair, but there wasn’t one. He sat on the bed instead.</p><p>Kylo was pleasantly surprised by Hux’s gentle tone and opened up to it. “It feels like it’s so… <em>there.</em> It never lets me forget that it’s there, that it’s on my face,” he struggled to explain. Millicent jumped out of Hux’s arms and padded over the sheets and Kylo’s legs to settle on his lap. Kylo stroked her head, feeling his tension dissipating under the warm comfort of animal acceptance.</p><p>“The nurse said it would leave a scar,” Hux said.</p><p>“Yes. It’s never going to go away. When people see my face, they’ll see my scar.” Kylo clenched his fist. It felt so good to finally tell someone the thoughts that had been chasing each other round his head.</p><p>“It’s a pity that your beau—that your face is ruined,” Hux said, inwardly cursing his tongue.</p><p>“I don’t mind so much in—in a vanity way. I mean—I never liked how my face looked anyway. But at least it was whole, and it was mine. But now it’s all broken and ruined, yes. And the scar, it’s not part of <em>me,</em> but it’s like—it’s like it’s taking over me. I don’t explain very well.”</p><p>“No no, it’s okay. I understand. Like a parasite, or a growth, maybe?” Hux said, reaching out and stroking the cat.</p><p>“Sort of, except that it’s even more a part of me. It’s a huge painful mark that covers—well, has destroyed, my real face.” Kylo covered the right side of his face with his hand, over the bandage, looking up at Hux from his left eye only. It wasn’t his dominant one and his vision was slightly off. Hux’s hair looked even more auburn like that. </p><p>“But Ren, you wear a mask all the time anyway.”</p><p>“Call me Kylo. I know I do, but it doesn’t take away the fact that it’s there. And I think I will get rid of the mask anyway.”</p><p>Hux’s heart leapt, though he couldn’t have said why. “Why’s that—Kylo?”</p><p>Kylo met Hux’s eyes briefly and looked back at the cat, trying to put it into words. “I don’t think I should need it.”</p><p>Hux made a strange grimace of realisation. “You mean... you’ve been <em>hiding</em> behind it this whole time?”</p><p>Kylo winced. </p><p>“Holding on to power is harder than our fathers—and grandfathers—made it seem,”  Hux acknowledged quietly. </p><p>Kylo nodded once. There was contemplative silence between them for a while. He tried to touch his scar again, rubbing at the bandage and sucking in a breath at the pain of it.</p><p>“Who did that to you?” Hux asked. “What happened?”</p><p>“I met—someone. The girl. She’s a powerful warrior with the Light. She’s my arch-nemesis,” Kylo said with perfect seriousness.</p><p>Hux snorted. “And there I was thinking you were in love with her. Silly me.”</p><p>That stung Kylo more than he liked to admit. “Well, with the Force it can go either way. It’s a strange entity, the Light and the Dark continuously engaged in both dance and battle.”</p><p>“Yes, yes. The Force, right. Having an arch-nemesis seems like a rather dangerous hobby to me—have you considered jogging? Or collecting model ships?”</p><p>Kylo ignored his teasing. “Hux, you know when you meet someone, and you see them across the room and catch their eye and there’s something about them and you just <em>know…</em>” Kylo tried to explain with an urgency that he found easier to direct at the cat. He didn’t notice Hux’s deep flush that belied his perfectly schooled expression. “You just know you’re going to dedicate all your waking hours to them, except that it’s different from love, you just know that one day you’re going to be battling for life and death among rain-swept and sea-lashed ruins, and the first of you to die will be because of the other…” Kylo touched his scar. “I’m sorry. It’s a Force thing.”</p><p>“No, don’t be. Do you think—do you think that someone can be your arch-nemesis, but they’re not yours?” Hux asked.</p><p>Kylo finally searched Hux's face. He didn’t think so, but then again—Hux was— “I don’t know. But I hope it won’t come to that.”</p><p>“I’ve always found the idea of arch-nemeses much more appealing than soulmates,” Hux said, avoiding his gaze and almost smiling. “No smushy romanticism, no touchy-feely. Just clean battle is more my style.”</p><p>“But Hux, battles aren’t clean.”</p><p>“Yes they are,” Hux objected. “Just shout, Fire! Push a button, and problem solved!”</p><p>“Well you absolutely do have a soulmate,” Kylo said, and continued before Hux could interrupt, “It’s Millicent, obviously. I mean, she’s the very definition of soft and smushy and touchy-feely, right?”</p><p>Hux actually laughed then, and took the cat back in his arms. His laugh was an odd sound, because Kylo had never heard it before. Hux was out of practice in laughing, Kylo decided. He needed some human connection. Everyone needed human connection.</p><p>“Well—at least she’s less likely to give me scars than an arch-nemesis.” Hux said.</p><p>Kylo ground his teeth.</p><p>“My father told me to be proud of your scars, because they tell a story of courage. They say that you’re stronger than pain. That you fought a worthy adversary, and even if it’s disease you are fighting, that’s still a battle scar,” Hux said, remembering that evening after he’d fought some of the stormtrooper younglings as a boy, fists and teeth, and he’d won. That was the first and last time he’d ever felt his father was proud of him.</p><p>“But I was a failure! She’d never even held a lightsaber—I should have been able to best her easily!”</p><p>“That doesn’t mean she’s never fought for her life before. And you said she was strong with the Force,” Hux said.</p><p>Kylo thought back to his first meeting with her, the meeting of minds. “She took my memories. That means she must have got hold of my training too.” He <em>had</em> wondered, in the back of his mind, why she had sometimes used her lightsaber blade downward at times, like he did. He had developed the technique himself at the academy simply because he was so much taller than the other students and it was easier to meet their blade like that. “But what will Snoke think?”</p><p>“Losing one battle doesn’t mean the war is lost.”</p><p>“Snoke doesn’t think that way.” Kylo said, touching the bandage unconsciously.</p><p>“No, but that doesn’t mean his way is the right way all the time.”</p><p>That grated, but Kylo knew he was right.</p><p>“I’ve got a meeting now, but think it over about the scars,” Hux said, standing up and scooping up Millicent. “And meanwhile we can both write our apology speeches for Snoke. Good luck with not getting killed.”</p><p>“Same, because I want to have that pleasure,” Kylo smiled and mock saluted. Snoke hadn’t quite drilled all of his father’s gestures out of him.</p><p> </p><p>Hux was right. Over time, Kylo did accept his scars and bore them with pride. They told the story of Rey, and though it felt fitting when she Force healed those scars that she had first given him, he was almost sorry to lose them. They had become a part of him.</p>
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